So, I went to the closest haven. When Echo Team had first arrived in Tehran we spent half a day at a safe house run by Barrier. It was staffed by two agents, a father and son. The father, Fariel, looked old enough to have been a school chum of Xerxes. His son, Cyrus, was a schoolteacher and probably the most boring person I’ve ever met. The kind of guy who speaks in a nasal monotone and can only talk about what he saw on TV.

Right now, though? I could use normal and boring. That house also had plenty of weapons and equipment. Rearming would go a long way toward chasing off the shakes. If I’d had a good fighting knife this morning then the encounter in my hotel room would have been a whole lot shorter and more satisfying.

At least I think it would have.

The Barrier safe house was a one-stop, two-room little pillbox near a bus stop. Lots of people coming and going all the time, lots of strangers. Good place to hide, right there in the open.

I knocked. There was no special trick. I didn’t have to knock three times then two then wait and knock four times. That was the movies. I knocked, and they answered.

Except that’s not exactly what happened.

As the locked clicked open and the door swung inward, Ghost stiffened and gave a sharp woof. Even dazed as he was he knew that something was wrong.

I pushed inside, driving whoever was behind the door in and back. I kicked the door shut as the man fell. I pulled the pistol and dropped into a combat crouch.

The man who lay on the floor staring up at me was Cyrus, the son of the man who ran the safe house. He looked up at me with eyes that were wild with fear and pain.

He was covered with blood, head to toe.

Ghost growled, but he was still trembling and looked ready to collapse.

I squatted near him and whispered in Persian. “How many are there?”

He tried to speak but only blood bubbled from between his lips. Cyrus gestured wildly toward the doorway at the end of the short foyer.

I was already in motion, running with quick, small steps, the pistol held in front of me, mouth set and hard. At the end of the foyer I crouched and did a fast look around the corner.

The living room was a study in crimson.

I eased around the corner.

Nothing moved.

But it was not empty. A man—Fariel Omidi—hung on the wall. Big carpenter nails had been driven savagely through his wrists and hands and feet. He had been crucified.

His head hung low, and from the damage I saw there was no way he could still be alive. No way in hell.

Ghost whined from the foyer but I waved him to stillness.